Infidel753

28 May 2012

The euro crisis -- the basics

There's a good chance that the euro crisis could come to a head in June. I'll get to the reasons for that in a moment; first a few basic points which are important for understanding what's going on, but not widely realized by Americans, mainly because the standard MSM talking points about the crisis obfuscate them.

1) The EU is not analogous to the US. Comparisons are often made between the EU and the US or between the euro and the dollar. The EU and the US are roughly similar in population and GNP size, and the US is superficially structured as a federation of smaller units. But the analogy doesn't work, and the reasons matter. The US really is one country, in the same sense that France is a country or Germany is a country; it just happens to be a very large country. Each of the 27 nations making up the EU has a separate identity, history, culture, and (often) language, dating back generations or in some cases centuries; in this sense each individual country, not the whole EU, has a feeling of nationhood similar to what the US has. The US grew to its present size by expansion from the original string of former British colonies on the Atlantic coast -- first the country bought or conquered new territory to the west, then Americans moved in and settled, and finally the new territories were divided into states to fit into the country's existing organizational structure. This is why, when you look at a map of the US, the western two-thirds of the country is mostly a mass of rectangles. These states were not ancient nations that joined a federation; they were sketched in with a ruler, in the interior space of a single nation, once the settler population density had become high enough to justify the structure of state government. The EU was formed by distinct, long-established nations joining a loose federation.

A better analogy in American terms would be to imagine the creation of a unified pseudo-government and common currency for the whole of North and South America. Think how unworkable such a merger of dozens of culturally and economically distinct nations would be, and you'll get a better sense of why the EU project can't succeed.

2) The EU cannot become a nation-state. This is why the above matters. There is now much talk of "fiscal transfer", meaning a continuous flow of subsidies in some form from the EU's economically-vibrant Germanic core to the stagnant "PIIGS" (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) -- "eurobonds" are the latest incarnation of the idea. If this became a permanent feature of the EU, it could probably save the euro and the EU, but it won't, because German taxpayers will not stand for it. Large-scale fiscal transfer exists in any unified state with economic disparities -- from rich south-eastern England to the rest of Britain, from richer western Germany to poorer eastern Germany, from blue to red states and from urban to rural in the US. Taxpayers tolerate this because the people they are helping are of their own nationality. But a German or Dane will never feel a Greek or Spaniard to be his fellow countryman the way people within a single nation do.

The same problem applies to other aspects of creating a unified nation-state. Consider the free movement of people. In my state, Oregon, half the population was born outside the state, but no one cares much, since most of them came from other parts of the US and are fellow Americans. No European nation would tolerate immigration on such a scale from other EU member countries with their different cultures, languages, and identities. Then there's military power. France and Britain, the only real military powers in the EU, will never hand over their navies and nuclear weapons to the fake government in Brussels. That "government" is not even taking the lead in the euro crisis; it's Angela Merkel, the elected leader of the biggest actual nation in the EU, who is calling the shots.

3) Austerity is exacerbating the problem. The EU authorities (meaning Merkel and her toadies) insist that the problems of the PIIGS are caused by too much spending and debt, and thus have imposed a regime of cuts and a goal of deficit reduction. With unemployment already sky-high in the target countries, the result has been terrible suffering as more jobs are cut and the social safety net frays -- and austerity is hurting deficit reduction, not helping, as rising unemployment means fewer people paying taxes and more claiming benefits. Austerity has the same effect as using leeches to cure anemia. What the PIIGS desperately need, as François Hollande understands, is economic stimulus and a focus on job creation. More people working and paying taxes, and fewer claiming benefits, will reduce the root causes of the deficits. The EU and its supporters appear blind to this, however; see for example this German interview with Greek far-left leader Alexis Tsipras, in which Tsipras explains the reality of the situation while the interviewer robotically regurgitates mindless austeritard clichés.

4) This is a currency crisis, not a debt crisis. Normally, the PIIGS could greatly alleviate their troubles by currency devaluation, which would make their products cheaper to foreign buyers, thus increasing exports and creating jobs. They can't do that now because they are locked into the euro common currency. If they abandon the euro and return to separate national currencies, they will suffer a period of turbulence, but then begin to recover. However, the EU elites (including almost all the establishment political parties in the various countries) are determined to avoid this because they have a deep attachment to the euro for non-economic reasons. Most PIIGS citizens, especially in Greece, themselves don't yet realize that abandoning the euro is the key to solving their problems.

5) So what's the big deal about June? First, Greece is holding a new election on June 17. If Tsipras ends up as head of government and keeps his pledge to openly defy the EU and reject austerity, the EU will likely cut off the bail-out loans and force the Greek government into bankruptcy, from which it can escape only by abandoning the euro and bringing back its own currency which it can control independently. Once this first domino falls, especially if Greece rapidly starts to recover, others will follow.

Second, Spain has reached the brink of default (see this explanation); given German resistance to large-scale fiscal transfer, it too may soon face leaving the euro as the only way to avoid total collapse. Again, the fall of one domino is likely to start a chain reaction.

6) What happens next? Whether in June or later, it seems almost inevitable that most or all of the euro-zone countries will eventually go back to separate currencies, and the euro will vanish entirely or else survive only in the Germanic core (essentially the old D-mark under another name). As to the effects on the world economy, and specifically the US economy and thus our upcoming election, there is plenty of speculation, but nobody really knows. There has never before in history been anything like the euro-zone -- several major nations sharing one currency -- so its break-up, too, will be an unprecedented event. But I think the upheaval will be less damaging than we fear. Because the crisis has dragged on so long, governments and financial institutions have had many months to prepare. The US could even benefit, if foreigners see its institutions and currency as a safe haven in which money can be sheltered from the European storm; this might partly offset whatever bad effects we suffer.

As an American, to speak bluntly, I hope that the euro collapse can be staved off for a few more months so that it doesn't endanger Obama's re-election. But make no mistake, it's coming. The euro experiment has already failed. The only question is how much longer hundreds of millions of people will be forced to suffer needlessly to avoid recognizing this fact.

26 May 2012

Quote for the day -- the moralists

"Romney is the most qualified candidate in the last 50 years. He’s competent, mature, seasoned and he’s a doer, not a talker. However, many people who like him would have big trouble voting for him,
for one thing is certain: as soon as he would take the oath, the
socially conservatives would be all over him. The same people who voted in droves against him in the primary, would be
on his case day in and day out. Should he want to pass legislation or
be reelected, he would have to cave to the SoCons. He would do it, since
he doesn’t really care about social issues, one way or the other. He
was just as gleefully pro-choice as he’s now against it. Make no mistake: the bible thumpers are relentless, they have countless
requests and are more then willing to impose them on everybody. The
same hypocrites screaming against the government for allegedly taking
away their freedoms are itching to shove their “moral values” down
everybody’s throats.

"An example: In Virginia, the republicans ran on economy and jobs. As
soon as they got in power their priorities switched to inserting vaginal
probes into women wanting an abortion. Another one: in 2006 before elections, in order to please the base, the
republican Senate majority leader Frist, together with Kyl of Arizona,
sneaked a piece of legislation (UIGEA) together with a must pass Port
Authority act, by which they practically destroyed the online poker in
US. The weasels didn’t dare to go after the American players, but they
banned the banks processing of credit card transactions. So if you, like
millions of other Americans (estimation was around 3 millions), enjoyed
playing a hand of poker online for a few dollars, with your after-tax
money, in the privacy of your own home, then bad luck. You can’t do it.
Why? Well, because the bible thumpers don’t allow you to. No country in
the world (save the dictatorships) banned their citizens to play online.
They did it in the “land of the free”. Recently Romney and Santorum told a Nevada tv station they are against
online poker. Why? Because it’s “bad for the people”, especially “poor
people”. So here they are, the “fighters for freedom”, ready to enforce
the nanny state’s power to protect people from themselves, exactly what
their hypocrite base claims to hate the most.

"So why anybody loving their personal freedoms would vote for Romney?
Everybody saw the appeal that contraceptives, porn banning and other
such issues had in the primary. Forcing a 14 year old girl raped by her
father to another atrocity like actually carrying the child? The bible
thumpers justify such an atrocity with a straight face. I saw Santorum
on CNN doing just that. Sure, the far right was against Romney, who is sane and balanced, but
once he’d win the election… birds of a feather stick together. At least, with the Dems, you know where you stand. Maybe some more
taxes, but if you are not rich, it doesn’t touch you too much. And if
you are rich, do you really care? Maybe more regulations, but at least those might bring some cleaner air
and water. However, the dems don’t itch to control your bedroom and
basic personal freedoms. Personally, I would rather starve then trade my freedom for the
so-called “morality” of bible thumpers. Millions others think the same
way. They will vote democratic, especially the women.

"For such a competent candidate like Romney, being so behind in the polls
has but one explanation: social issues. Fiscally conservative? Good.
Conservative on defense ? Perfect. In the same boat with nutty social
conservatives? A deal-breaker. If you are voting just the man, the competency and accomplishments, then
Romney deserves to be elected. However, if you look at the whole
picture, at the constituency that a candidate must keep happy, then
Obama should win hands down. Sure, the environmentalists, the unions,
the socialist egalitarians and the peaceniks day-dreamers are a pain in
the neck, but are far more benign then the bible thumpers. So let the dems win, then have the SoCons justifying the loss by “we
didn’t choose a real conservative” and in 2016 nominating a real
far-right nut job, only to lose even worse, and so on until they go into
oblivion. Good riddance."

20 May 2012

Odds and ends

I didn't have time to do a link round-up today, but here are a few items that caught my attention:

This week brought us the best Romney quote yet: "I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I’ll stand by what I said, whatever it was." Like the etch-a-sketch thing, it fits the guy like a glove.

The National Review accused Elizabeth Warren of plagiarizing a book which, as it turns out, was published after her own book was. This is really kind of sad because the National Review, long ago, was actually a pretty respectable magazine. In the 1980s I subscribed to it.

The most barbarous regime on Earth has just banned the use of the English language in business. Well, we'll soon see how much the endorsement of some tinpot medieval theocracy matters to the global status of our language. Interestingly, the place where I read this was the English-language website of Russia TV. Apparently a strong, confident non-Western society does not feel slighted by using English to communicate internationally.

The Washington Post reported that, as of last year, slightly more than half of all the babies born in the US were non-white -- and so naturally everyone has to pick up on this claim and ruminate on it. Of course, as I've pointed out earlier, the claim itself -- like the claim that half the total US population will be "non-white" by 2050 -- is true only insofar as the person pictured at the top of this post is "non-white". (It's highly unlikely that the racial categories we use today will still be meaningful in 2050, anyway.) Such reports may be useful to the right wing for keeping their knuckle-dragging legions agitated and ready to rumble (and vote), but they don't reflect reality.

As Europe and (much of) the United States have become essentially de-Christianized over the last century or two, science has flourished and forged ahead there. Unfortunately the process also works in reverse. South Korea, unlike its neighbors Japan and China, has proven highly susceptible to Christian proselytizing -- about 30% of the population is now Christian -- and now we see the fruits of this: the Ministry of Education has agreed to remove evolution from school textbooks after a campaign by Christian groups. PZ Myers thinks this suggests a possible strategy for intellectual warfare.

.....hobo camps.....defined OWS as a movement of its own oddball 1% rather
than the American mainstream. If instead OWS had staged daily 1-hour
teach-ins—followed by trash pick-up in the parks where it convened—it
might have proceeded to build on its first success.

Commenter "ItsTimeNow" responds:

We did. We had daily cleanups, sometimes more. We had multiple
teach ins going on all the time. Is it our fault the media didn't report
this and instead focused on the fringe elements? The homeless who will
naturally wander in? There were incidents were the city drove up with
vans, and released mentally insane people right there, across the street
from Zuccotti! We accepted them instead of forcing them out on the
street, and for that we got a bad reputation.

Don't believe every impression you get from the MSM. They're pushing a narrative.

The G8 summit just concluded in Washington ended with Obama endorsing the new pro-growth, pro-jobs, anti-austerity wave sweeping Europe, strengthening France's new President Hollande who is the most powerful representative of that movement. Let's hope that this will embolden the Greeks (who return to the polls next month) to give even more of their votes to Syriza, the far-left anti-austerity coalition, which is committed to defying the EU on this issue. The cut-spending austerity-mania pushed by the EU and by US Republicans has already inflicted horrific suffering and sent country after country into an economic death-spiral. The faster it is swept away by Hollande, Obama, and other enlightened leaders hopefully to be elected in other countries soon, the better.

As if bitter-end über-austeritard Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, weren't having a lousy enough day already, she had to stand next to British Prime Minister David Cameron and watch as a British team squashed Germany in some big-deal soccer game.

18 May 2012

Man, beast, and the big lie

[I'm without much access to my own computer for a few days, and only on the internet sporadically, so I won't be posting much. However, this post at Progressive Eruptions, about the ethics of meat-eating, led me to write a comment which I think deserves a post of its own.]

I've held for many years that the one great central error in all of human thinking is the belief that humans have souls. That is the original error from which all our other errors flow.

This question here -- the ethics of meat-eating -- is a good example. Most people's thinking about it starts from an unstated premise that there is a qualitative rather than quantitative difference between humans and other animals -- it's not just that we're more intelligent, more emotionally sophisticated, have more elaborate social organization, etc. than other species (just as some other species are "more" each of those things than yet other species -- we're at one end of a spectrum). It's that there's some kind of fundamental, un-bridgeable gulf of difference between, on the one hand, one particular great-ape species, and on the other hand, the other four great-ape species and all the other animals in the world. Everything from the chimpanzee to the dust mite is in one class, we're alone in the other.

This is biologically absurd, but it's taken deep root in our thinking, even in our language, as in the use of "humans" and "animals" as contrasting categories, as if the former were not a subset of the latter. "Humans have rights, but animals do not" is obviously a mere statement of dogma rather than a description of reality -- but beyond that, the more subtle error is in the very categories themselves. To state the same stance realistically -- "One animal species has rights, all other animal species do not" -- would at once force attention toward all the real questions that such a stance raises.

Today millions of people who would consider cannibalism (and certainly the systematic raising of humans to be slaughtered for food) to be an unspeakable outrage, have no qualms about eating bacon; many of those who would march in the streets to protest inhumane conditions in Guantanamo are unmoved by the far more inhumane conditions in factory farms. This is only possible because of that fundamental error in our thinking, that other animals are not just our inferiors in degree but are somehow fundamentally different, not the same "stuff" as we are, so that their sufferings -- and, yes, rights -- can simply be ignored as if they did not exist.

12 May 2012

Video of the week -- the outer worlds

10 May 2012

Sharpening distinctions

One of the few remaining Republican giants of the old school, Senator Richard Lugar, was teabagged into political oblivion this week. The Nutty faction of Republicans, no longer able to stomach Lugar's record of compromise with Democrats and concessions to reality, demanded a properly insane ideologue instead -- and they appear to have gotten one, in the person of new Republican candidate Richard Mourdock.

This was a sharpening of distinctions, the presentation of a starker choice, one which more realistically reflects the contrast between the parties today. Moderates and centrists who felt comfortable voting for Lugar will feel much less so about Mourdock. Can the Democrats now pick up this seat? It's far from a sure thing -- Indiana's a pretty red state, and Mourdock isn't as obviously out in orbit around Pluto as, say, Christine O'Donnell was. But our chances have surely improved.

An even greater sharpening of distinctions took place this week around another hot-button issue -- gay marriage. North Carolina's already-infamous Amendment One passed, not only affirming the ban on gay marriage but also obliterating all intermediate rights such as civil unions and domestic-partner benefits (it has been claimed that many North Carolina voters favored such concessions and would not have voted for Amendment One if they had realized it prohibited them -- if so, let's hope buyer's remorse is settling in). Within days of this triumph for the Godhatesfagsian theocratic right, the President of the United States personally endorsed gay marriage. Again, a stark contrast, highlighting the real differences between the parties.

Some have argued that Obama was pushed into this move by Biden's recent remarks about gay marriage (the latter branded as a "gaffe"); others consider the administration too savvy to have let itself be put in such a position, and insist the whole thing was orchestrated. To me it seems just as likely that Obama had "evolved" to his newly-stated position some time ago, and felt it appropriate to make a public statement now in order to reassure a reliable but embattled constituency in the wake of the North Carolina vote.

Was it risky? I question how many extra knuckle-dragger votes the Republicans will really gain from Obama's announcement. Those who believe him to be a Muslim communist Nazi Kenyan America-hater have no doubt long been convinced that he's pro-gay-marriage whether he explicitly said so or not; their votes were in the bag for the Republicans all along. It's the less-motivated part of the left, the naïve both-parties-are-the-same cynics, the ones who aren't paying attention, who are more likely to be reachable here.

I myself, for example, have been somewhat relieved at the victory of the Sane faction of Republicans in nominating Romney -- while Obama is far better, and is guaranteed my vote, at least we don't need to worry about Bachmann or Perry becoming President. A site I regularly read to follow thinking among the Sane faction is the pro-Romney Race42012, far removed from the ravings of RedState or Hot Air. Yet even there, when Obama's announcement hit the news, the same old dehumanizing clichés and knee-jerk bigotries ambled forth (see comment thread here), knuckles dragging, to remind us that these people, whether Sane or Nutty, are The Enemy. (For the Nutty faction, there was this.) One would have to be an impossibly naïve cynic to look at all this and still claim there is no meaningful difference between the parties.

Remember, getting people fired up is good for us. When turn-out is high (2008), we win. When turn-out is low (2010) they win.

As Mourdock himself recently said, "We are at that point where one side or the other has to win this argument. One side or the other will dominate." If that's what they want, I'm up for it. Let's make sure it's our side.

08 May 2012

The liberation of Europe -- socialism rising

Next week François Hollande will be sworn in as the first Socialist President of France in 17 years. This is the beginning of the end for Europe's EU-imposed austerity madness, the euro currency, and hopefully the EU itself.

At last we have the leader of a country too large and powerful to be
bullied back into line by the EU, openly rejecting the austerity mandate
(massive cuts when unemployment is already near 20% in some countries!)
and calling for fiscal stimulus, to be paid for by higher taxes on the
rich and corporations.

The markets, pundits, EU bureaucrats, etc. will throw a fit, but as other countries see France succeeding, they’ll follow suit.

It's already starting, in fact. Last week's local elections in Britain produced major losses for the Conservative party, which has also been pursuing austerity (though not at the EU's behest). Part of this was due to a major loss of votes to the upstart UK Independence Party, which won an average of 14% of the vote in those constituencies where it ran a candidate. But that should be of no comfort to EU supporters and austeritards, since the UKIP, as its name suggests, is a single-issue party whose defining aim is to get Britain out of the EU.

Greece's election on Sunday produced an utter mess, with several radical and extremist parties winning big -- but the clear theme was a mass voter rejection of both major mainstream parties, because of their acquiescence in the EU's austerity decrees.

In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and elsewhere, Europeans have been backed against the wall by austerity policies and the un-democratic EU pseudo-government that imposes them -- and the backlash is ready to begin, as the new France shows the way.

There will be a need for those of us who understand what’s happening to
explain it to Americans. Republicans constantly blame Europe’s crisis
on socialism and debt, whereas it’s really caused by austerity policies
similar to what they themselves advocate for this country. When France
begins to escape the austerity death spiral, we need to make sure that
Americans understand the significance of it.

04 May 2012

Quote for the day -- congratulations, fundies

"I had dinner with my ex-wife a few weeks ago, and she’s gone from a
down-the-line Republican voter in 2008 to vowing that she’ll never cast a
vote for a GOP candidate again, all due to the contraception brouhaha,
the trans-vaginal ultrasound bills, etc. And she’s (marginally)
pro-life, for God’s sake. I honestly think most of the commenters on this site have no idea the
breadth and depth of the damage that’s been done in only a few months.
Romney absolutely cannot win with the type of gender gaps he’s posting
across the board, and it’s going to damage other candidates down the
ticket. In Washington state, we’ve fielded an outstanding gubernatorial
candidate who’s considered the odds-on favorite to win. But at every
turn, he’s being besieged with questions and confrontations about his
stand on contraception, abortion, etc.....Congratulations, social conservatives, you’ve once again shat the bed with your overzealousness."

03 May 2012

Stealth insurrection on the right

The Gingrich and Santorum camps have folded their tents, and the Christian Right and the teabaggers have (mostly) reconciled themselves to supporting the despised Romney in order to remove the hated Obama. But below the MSM radar, a stealth insurrection soldiers on.

My observation of the right wing of the internet includes the Ron Paul cult, an alternate reality far more divorced from real reality than the "normal" right-wing bubble is. In that alternate reality, Ron Paul is the only true voice of the people, virtually a messiah -- if he hasn't actually won any states, that's because of deluded voters, or fraud, or media conspiracies. If he gets almost no news coverage, it's not because he's a fringe crank with no chance of winning, it's because of a "media black-out" conspiracy. Think of the kind of person who sits in a remote cabin in Montana writing unreadable pamphlets "proving" that Federal Reserve notes aren't real money, fuming about the Illuminati and the gold standard and CIA mind-control rays*, and gloating about some vague impending "collapse" of society. Now imagine a whole subculture made up of such people. You'll be pretty close.

And the hard-core Paultards are not falling into line behind Romney. They have a plan, and it involves exploiting arcane procedural rules of the Republican party to achieve two goals:

1) Securing enough Paul-loyal delegates, despite the actual popular vote in the Republican primaries and caucuses, to win the nomination for Paul at the convention.

For a sense of the mind-set at work, check out the comment threads (more than the actual posts) here and here and here. Mainstream Republicans have started to notice the problem.

Why is this happening now? Paul has run for President before without his cult resorting to such measures. But he's now 76, and this is probably his last shot. And the Paultards are at least as paranoid about Obama as the teabaggers are. Some believe that if Obama wins a second term, he'll become a dictator and there will be no more elections.

What's the likely actual outcome of this insurrection? If Paul did somehow win the nomination, Obama would have an easy victory -- he'd be running against an aging fringe crank whose ideology would horrify most voters once they understood it, while the millions of rank-and-file Republicans who voted for Romney at their state primaries and conventions would be outraged at seeing their votes swept aside by an organized minority exploiting obscure rules and technicalities. Such a scenario is, of course, very improbable. But if (as is likely) the Republican establishment swats down the insurrection and Romney's nomination goes according to plan, the party will have another problem.

You really need to spend some time in the Paultardosphere, soaking in its ambiance, to grasp how utterly cut off from reality these people are. They really think they can do this. And they've been telling themselves for months that Paul must be nominated or the country is doomed. At the convention, when their bubble world is inevitably burst by collision with reality, the shock will be profound. The results could include a massive tantrum disrupting the convention, a third-party run pulling some percentage of votes from Romney, and the Devil knows what else. It probably won't include falling quietly into line behind the nominee.

Romney will likely try to buy off Paul with a major speaking slot at the convention, which he's said to covet. But for all we know, Paul himself may endorse the insurrection and expect it to produce results; and in any case, the cult may not renounce its dreams and fall into line even if the messiah commands it. They're too worked up for that.

Years ago the Republicans made a pact with the Devil, embracing teh crayzee in various forms to win the support of small but fanatical armies of true believers, and lately the Devil has been coming round to collect. O'Donnell and Angle were just the beginning.

[*I don't mean they believe in those specific things, though some of them may -- I'm trying to give a sense of the general mentality. Actual Paultard conspiracy theories are too boring to form any clear impression.]

02 May 2012

The Grenell resignation -- who's the boss?

The resignation of Richard Grenell, just a week after being hired by the Romney campaign as its foreign-policy spokesman, is more than merely one more example of right-wing anti-gay bigotry. Bigotry was certainly there, notably from Bryan Fischer and the "Family Research Council". But the real story here is the affirmation that, in today's Republican party, it's the Christian Right that calls the shots -- and Romney is willing to let them.

That might seem an odd assertion since Grenell quit rather than being fired, and the campaign issued a statement that "We wanted him to stay because he had superior qualifications for the position he was hired to fill." Romney, however, never stood up to the pressure over Grenell. The campaign did not even make use of him for "the position he was hired to fill", since he immediately became the target of a firestorm of fundie fulmination. As for Romney himself, a "Sister Souljah moment" might have been too much to hope for, but given the virulence of the attacks on a member of his campaign, a firm public statement of support and a finessed but clear rebuke of Fischer would not have been amiss. In fact, as far as I can see, the campaign did nothing meaningful to prevent Grenell from being hounded out.

I even wonder if hiring Grenell was something of a trial balloon, via which Romney was testing how much tolerance the Christian Right would show toward deviation from its orthodoxy as he tries to pivot toward the center for the general-election campaign. If so, he has his answer.

And we have ours. To all those who think Romney is a closet moderate who only took extreme positions for the sake of the primary contest, and would govern from the center if elected, think again. He likes to claim that the only reason he governed as a moderate in Massachusetts was that he had an overwhelmingly-Democratic state legislature to contend with, and I think he's telling the truth there, in the sense that matters most. It's not that he is or isn't a closet moderate; I don't know, and that isn't the point. The point is that he's willing to be a captive of the political forces acting on him. If he won't stand up to Fischer over an issue of campaign staffing, why should we think that, as President, he'd stand up to Boehner and McConnell and the whole menagerie of theocrats and bigots that infest the right wing these days? Look at the right wing of today as a whole, and what you're seeing is what you'd get from a President Romney.

Update: For more on the true cowardice and appeasement displayed by the Romney campaign, see here, especially the updates at the end.

01 May 2012

Quote for the day -- the radicals

"I think the general election will be as sharp a contrast between the two
parties as we've seen in a generation. You have a Republican Party, and
a presumptive Republican nominee, that believes in drastically rolling
back environmental regulations, that believes in drastically rolling
back collective-bargaining rights, that believes in an approach to
deficit reduction in which taxes are cut further for the wealthiest
Americans, and spending cuts are entirely borne by things like education
or basic research or care for the vulnerable. All this will be
presumably written into their platform and reflected in their
convention. I don't think that their nominee is going to be able to
suddenly say, "Everything I've said for the last six months, I didn't
mean." I'm assuming that he meant it. When you're running for president,
people are paying attention to what you're saying."

About Me

Individualist, transhumanist, American patriot, socialist, atheist, liberal, optimist, pragmatist, and regular guy -- it has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that it is technology rather than ideology or politics that has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.